Hegel was an early secularization theorist of modernity

Evidence

The genealogy of secularism has to be traced through the concept of the secular—in part to the Renaissance doctrine of humanism, in part to the Enlightenment concept of nature, and in part to Hegel’s philosophy of history. … It will be recalled that Hegel—an early secularization theorist— saw the movement of world history culminating in the Truth and Freedom of what he called “the modern period.” Like later secularists, he held that from the Reformation to Enlightenment and Revolution, there emerged at last a harmony between the objective and subjective conditions of human life resulting from “the painful struggles of History,” a harmony based on “the recognition of the Secular as capable of being an embodiment of Truth; whereas it had been formerly regarded as evil only, as incapable of Good—the latter being essentially ultramundane.” — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 936

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names the three genealogical strands (humanism, Enlightenment nature, Hegel’s philosophy of history) that Asad will trace the secular through.
• XREF: Hegel as ‘early secularization theorist’ connects to the vaulted Cooper thread where genealogy of secular values must be historicized rather than treated as universal.